Secondhand fashion is rarely second best. Sometimes it looks far better

The rise of secondhand fashion is an enormously cheering thing, and in a world not currently over-blessed with hugely cheering things, it is worth taking a moment to celebrate.

In a short space of time, the pre-loved fashion economy has gone from being niche – vintage stores full of antique silk dresses at the top end, jumble sale tat at the other, not much in the middle – to a viable way to source every part of your wardrobe. The marketplace of new-to-you clothes, rather than new-to-the-world clothes, is now an aspirational, respectable, efficient, affordable place to shop. Not just for the pieces that have always been associated with secondhand (tea dresses for retro dressers, rare jeans for denim nerds) but for straight-down-the-middle mainstream wardrobe stuff. Your cousin’s North Face puffer jacket? £45 from Vinted. Your line manager’s Zara blazer? £18 courtesy of Depop. The Prada handbag your bestie dreams about her friends clubbing together for on her big birthday? £250 on eBay.

Secondhand stopped meaning second best a while ago. Quite the opposite, in fact. To proclaim the pre-loved provenance of your new fit has become the ultimate flex, because you get to show off your taste without being shamed for your carbon footprint.

But parity with off-the-peg was just the start. Secondhand is now moving even higher up the pecking order. Many of fashion’s hottest pieces this year look better secondhand than they do new. Not just as good, but actually better. Pre-loved isn’t just a better option because it is more sustainable and more affordable. It is quite simply where the best stuff is to be found.

The rugby shirt in this picture is a prime example. Rugby shirts are having a moment in fashion, for reasons that have absolutely nothing at all to do with rugby. The rugby shirt picks up where the three-button polo shirt left off, but with added fashion content – stripes, fun collars, a contrast white collar. The simple, plain-colour, three-button polo shirt is still a useful option to have in your style arsenal, but it has become a victim of its own success. It works so well at signalling approachable-but-efficient that it has been adopted as a staff uniform at hotels and restaurants, gyms and spas. So at this point it is a little too generic to make much of a style statement. The rugby shirt, by contrast, has the tactical advantage of surprise.

On the British high street, which is no slouch at this game, you could easily buy a brand-new rugby shirt off the peg. But the way fashion works means that, in many cases, those will have been inspired by (or, indeed, copied from) a rugby shirt that someone in the design team has brought in, perhaps from their own wardrobe, perhaps from their dad’s, perhaps from a charity shop. And as a result, the new versions being sold in store feel like flimsy copies.

This flimsiness is literal, because the newly minted items are mostly made of thin fabric, rather than the sturdy woven cotton of a rugby shirt proper. But it is more than that – there is an intangible but inescapable air of inauthenticity, a phoned-in insincerity to many of the new high-street rugby shirts. The real thing has more spirit, somehow. Top tip: if you want something fitted, try buying a “junior” size, as shown here.

Two other elements of this year’s wardrobe where pre-loved has a significant advantage are jeans and daytime bags. These are purchases that, if you get them right, can be worn over and over again. Which makes it super helpful to get an honest picture of what they will look like when they’ve been around the block a few times.

Pre-loved helps you make good choices because you get a more accurate sense of how jeans will fit when they’ve relaxed in the way that denim always does over the first few wears, and enables you to judge whether a bag will lose its appeal once it gets the corners knocked off a little. When the seductive dazzle of box-fresh newness is taken off the table, you are able to make better decisions about what is worth buying. Secondhand is the thinking shopper’s first choice.

Model: Lily Fofana at Milk. Hair and makeup: Sophie Higginson using Davines and Dr Sam’s Skincare. Rugby top, £50, and bag, £60, both from Rokit. Jeans, £160, Samsøe Samsøe